Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#541

Post by naasking » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #410

amenghra wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lawyer friend of mine told me his firm doesn't use software to check all the "hereafter referred to" are bound to their template and vice-versa. They instead have to print the document and go through it with a highlighter. The firm charges their clients on an hourly basis, so they don't really have an incentive to be more efficient.

You hit the nail on the head, there is an incentive to automate legal services ala legal zoom but for lawyers themselves the more tedious and paper based the process is the more they can make.

> for lawyers themselves the more tedious and paper based the process is the more they can make.

I don't get it. I'm pretty sure they're not hurting for new cases, so they'd make up any losses in fewer hours with more clients.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#542

Post by naasking » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:00 PM UTC

derekdahmer wrote: post #345

rpedela wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I investigated doing a SaaS product in the legal space. One of the things I heard multiple times from lawyers is that they are more likely to buy a product if they can bill their clients directly. What you are talking about would not fall into that category. That doesn't mean you couldn't build a successful business, but I think it is important to understand that the market has different rules.

I've heard the same thing from multiple people attempting to build for the legal space. Lawyers won't pay for software to save time because that has a negative ROI for them. OTOH they may pay for tools that helps them provide more services, bill more time, find more clients, or decrease the chance of mistakes.

> OTOH they may pay for tools that helps them provide more services, bill more time, find more clients, or decrease the chance of mistakes.

But... saving time means they have more time to provide more services, accept new clients, and review their documents to decrease mistakes. Is the relationship not apparent in their minds?

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#543

Post by bicubic » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:01 PM UTC

cake93 wrote: post #529

bicubic wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know where I could source some sample data? I'm developing a VR data visualization system but not in this particular context, could certainly look into it.

Here, follow the instructions to download and install the HDF5 plugin for Fiji: http://lmb.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/resources/opensource/i... From the same site you can download "pollen.h5". Then follow the steps to load the dataset in "hyperstack (multichannel)" mode. This will open a window where each frame in the movie is a z-slice of the 3D image. Then go to Plugins/Volume Viewer (scroll down) and switch the mo…

Thanks for the references, looking.

By the way, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PVAcLlYUpg

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#544

Post by tajen » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:04 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #505

mysterypie wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't they still bill whatever they want? If 10 hours of proofreading, form filling, photocopying, and filing would be billed for $1500 (10 hours x $150 an hour), couldn't they still charge $1500 if the software took 80 milliseconds to do the same job? Oh, the clients expect an itemized bill? Simple, the above charges would be "10 legal intern equivalent hours @ $150/hour". If a client questions it, the lawyer can ex…

I think the problem is one of mindset. From my perspective, even looking at accountants. Their industry and the clients they serve think that they are selling their "time", and not a service by itself. So, reducing the time it takes the lawyer/accountant to do something simply means less time being billed. It does not mean that they can now charge "more" for the time, as the cost per unit of that expert's time appear…

I chose my accountant because I could record my spendings online. He can just generate my yearly reports on one click in his backend, which he bills €80 for, "per click". He gives better advice because he has more customers, thanks to this efficiency, he doesn't spend time on mundane stuff and spends most his time meeting customers like me who present him various problems to solve, therefore he's more accoustomed to problem-solving.

Comapanies in my coworking space switch one after one. One has gone from a ~6500€ yearly bill to ~3500€ (3 employees), while improving reportability.

Non-industrialized accountants are just as necessary as human cashiers: Not. Lawyers are a bit harder to industrialize.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#545

Post by naasking » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:05 PM UTC

scardine wrote: post #144

A ticketing system that doesn't sux (I like RequestTracker, but it shows its age). Top players are ridiculously overpriced. My management style is like this: every task/request is numbered, placed in a queue and assigned to a professional. What I expect from my ticketing system: - every manager should be able to assign tasks to someone and set the order they must be executed. He needs know what his team is doing and…

> every manager should be able to assign tasks to someone and set the order they must be executed. He needs know what his team is doing and when they finish each task.

That sounds like unnecessary micromanaging. You couldn't possibly have enough detailed knowledge to know the proper order of tasks in all cases. Possibly even most cases.

I agree that communicating the priorities are important, but the boots on the ground have a much better understanding of what they're working with than you do.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#546

Post by naasking » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:06 PM UTC

thomasdub wrote: post #354

tacostakohashi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here seems to be that users/customers insist on customizing any such app to death. Personally, I think the optimal ticket system would have this data for each ticket: * A unique, prefixed ticket # (JIRA gets this right) * An assignee (like an email To:) * A reporter (like an email From:) * A one-line summary (like an email Subject:) * A multi-line body (like an email body, but ideally with markdown) * Att…

This sounds very like Redmine [0]. It's ostensibly for project "issues" however it's extremely customizable and all of the above are included in the default config and not much more. It sounds like if you removed about 2 default fields it'd be perfect for the ticketing system you describe above. Plus RSS + Notifications + a solid API. [0] http://www.redmine.org/

Even the older Trac has all of those features.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#547

Post by naasking » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:09 PM UTC

fusiongyro wrote: post #165

scardine wrote: post #144

A ticketing system that doesn't sux (I like RequestTracker, but it shows its age). Top players are ridiculously overpriced. My management style is like this: every task/request is numbered, placed in a queue and assigned to a professional. What I expect from my ticketing system: - every manager should be able to assign tasks to someone and set the order they must be executed. He needs know what his team is doing and…

I blogged recently about some problems I have with JIRA: http://www.storytotell.org/constraints-and-semantics/ In a nutshell, I argue that the problem with most ticket systems is that they do not constrain the domain enough, so they wind up having similar problems to email (sifting through a chronologically-ordered pile of text rather than structured, semantically-ordered information). Your comments make me think the…

> Your comments make me think the crux of the problem is that people want tickets to be like email and use email to manage them. I'm not sure you can ever overcome the "chronological pile-up" problem if you allow email as a user interface to ticketing.

I agree that's partly it, but that seems ok when you're in the thick of discussing a problem/fix. If you're doing a code review or something after a fix has been pushed, you actually want certain messages to stand out to describe resolutions and whatnot.

So like gmail where you can star/mark certain replies as important and those messages would show up at top-level in the ticket, where all other messages are collapsed.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#548

Post by agentgt » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

I'm not in the industry but I would really love a better way of growing your own food indoors while minimizing as much space but growing enough to support two people a day.

Basically it is either build your own large messy setup or buy a complete novel piece of crap that will barely support a single meal... aka aerogarden.

It would be nice to have basically a large self contained opaque cabinet with drawers of growing food.

Basically I want a food growing appliance with plumbing and electrical hookups.

I would easily be willing to spend a couple grand on something like that.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#549

Post by kaa2102 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

agentgt wrote: post #548

I'm not in the industry but I would really love a better way of growing your own food indoors while minimizing as much space but growing enough to support two people a day. Basically it is either build your own large messy setup or buy a complete novel piece of crap that will barely support a single meal... aka aerogarden. It would be nice to have basically a large self contained opaque cabinet with drawers of growin…

I attended a Washington Post Millennial startup event (inGENuitY) last year that featured several companies like this. http://wapo.st/1TvsnAv

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#550

Post by ohstopitu » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:26 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #157

ohstopitu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a solution that's VERY VERY anti-consumerish. Being a SaaS provider, create an extensions that you have to install (something consumers want...). This extension should have the permissions to read history / or urls visiting. Have a blacklist transmitted of urls (so you don't need to transfer the user's data back to the server) and match with it. If it matches...you have to work on that consumer a lot m…

The more anti-consumer way would be to just pipe every URL back home in real time.

it would definitely give you more analytics to work with...but that was not the scope :$